Alvaro Fernandez

First half hat trick from Wondo sets the stage for a commanding win in the opening of group play for the US. Klinsmann says McInerney "is on a good path." Video of brilliant tifo in Portland. Altidore returns to the Prem. Union bits and more.

With an injury-riddled half-season at Qatari club Al-Rayyan that saw him feature just 10 times the domestic league and AFC Champions League combined, Alvaro Fernandez is ready for the next challenge.

Fernandez, currently a member of the Chicago Fire, is looking for another team to play for outside the United States, with perhaps a move back to Major League Soccer for next season, according to reports out of South America.

Well, it appears the Men in Red are cashing in on their first round pick.

According to Soccer By Ives, the Chicago Fire have acquired midfielder Jeff Larentowicz as well as the 30th overall pick (second round) in tomorrow's MLS SuperDraft from the Colorado Rapids in exchange for the Fire's 11th overall pick and $75,000 in allocation money.

The Chicago Fire needed a win to clinch the second seed and the third best record in MLS. The rewards would be avoiding the knockout round, and an almost guaranteed birth into the CONCACAF Champions League. Instead, the Fire let opportunities pass them by and left points on the table. In an exciting and frustrating game broadcast on NBC Sports Network, the Fire and DC United played in a back and forth, up and down affair, quite different than the cagey defensive affair that most experts predicted.

Chicago Fire midfielder Alvaro Fernandez has been called up for two upcoming Uruguayan World Cup Qualifiers.The first match will take place on October 12 at Estadio Malvinas Argentinas in Mendoza, Argentina. The second match will take place on October 16 at Estadio Hernando Siles in La Paz, Bolivia.

It's getting to be about that time where we start to look at the Seattle Sounders' decision to sign Christian Tiffert and trade away Alvaro Fernandez. The Sounders and Chicago Fire have each played eight games since the trade and appear to be locked in a pretty tight race to see who finishes higher up the regular-season table.

D.C. United lost Dwayne DeRosario for the rest of the regular season, but that didn't stop them from reviving their playoff hopes with a big win and no player played a bigger role in that win than Chris Pontius.

Rumors about Wells Thompson being traded to the Chicago Fire started yesterday. That's weird I
thought. Wells Thompson is a guy that this team doesn't need. The rumors persisted today but the
move seemed so odd, I brushed it off. I don't have that luxury anymore as Wells Thompson went to
Facebook to post a picture of himself in the Fire's locker room with the words, "Breaking News:
Newest Member of the Chicago Fire Team!

The curious case of Sebastian Grazzini and the Chicago Fire has come to a resolution.

The Fire loaned Grazzini to Argentine club Atletico de Rafaela on Friday. The terms of the deal
were not disclosed. The Fire had exercised their option on the Argentine playmaker for a second
year at the end of June after a bit of a contract dispute, which, according to the Chicago Sun
Times, was started over Grazzini misunderstanding the original terms of his deal with the club.

The long-standing question of whether Marco Pappa would be leaving the Chicago Fire and heading
to Europe this season has finally been answered.

Yes, Pappa is heading to Europe, but no, he won't be leaving the Fire this season.

Chicago announced on Monday that Pappa had signed a pre-contract with Dutch Eredivisie side
Heerenveen, but that Pappa would remain with the Fire for the rest of the 2012 season, which will
run through the end of his current contract.

Chester, PA - The Chicago Fire made their only trip to PPL Park this Saturday to take on the
Philadelphia Union for the second time this season. The Union have been looking like an improved
side since firing Piotr Nowak in June, but with Jack McIntery out on suspension and Carlos Valdez
out from international duty, this was a game that the Fire should walk away from with three points
and nothing less.

The Chicago Fire hit the road to PPL Park this Sunday evening looking to bring back three points
from Philadelphia for the first time in club history. While the Union are in eighth place in the
Eastern Conference, they have also played the fewest games with 20. The Fire, meanwhile, find
themselves in fifth place, the final Eastern playoff spot, only one point behind fourth place
D.

The Chicago Fire returned home from San Jose and resumed training Tuesday morning, shaking off
the late equalizer provided by Steven Lenhart as the team now puts the Western Conference in the
rear-view mirror, facing only Eastern Conference foes for the remainder of the season.

As you are all now well aware of Alvaro Fernandez has been acquired by the Chicago Fire for
allocation money. This can only be described as a huge boost for the Fire organization. Fernandez
has been a main stay in the very good Seattle offensive attack over the last few years. His
production has fallen off from last season to this season.

With today's Summer transfer window closing the Seattle Sounders made two moves to dramatically
shift their "Ideal XI." With Alvaro Fernandez heading to the Chicago Fire for allocation money and
the newly official signing of Christian Tiffert as the team's sixth Designated Player the full
impact won't be felt for a few weeks.

The other shoe in the Christian Tiffert signing has dropped and it's Alvaro Fernandez's
departure. The Seattle Sounders midfielder, who first announced that he was leaving the team via
Twitter, has been traded to the Chicago Fire in exchange for allocation money, the team announced
on Wednesday. The move presumably clears the way for Christian Tiffert to be announced as the
team's newest Designated Player.

With the signing of Designated Player and FC Kaiserslautern midfielder Christian Tiffert, the
Seattle Sounders needed to create a DP opening on their roster. With the trade of Alvaro Fernandez
to the Chicago Fire, they've done just that.Â

The Sounders sent Fernandez to Chicago in exchange for an undisclosed amount of allocation money
Friday, making way for Tiffert and sending a DP to Chicago for the second time in two years.

It happened on August 23 of 2011. A team of mainly reserves (this isn't hyperbole) went down to Monterrey, Mexico and pulled off a 1-nil win. That Seattle Sounders side faced a fairly standard Rayados lineup. They won. It was an upset, but the stakes were not high. It damaged the mystique, but was not an advancement in a knockout stage.

The Revolution may have made some important moves this offseason, but so has the rest of the MLS Eastern Conference. While New England has reinforced their squad in all areas of the pitch, they'll need to compliment those reinforcements with a game plan for each and every opponent they face this season.

The list of players traded in the past six months for Allocation Money should give you a bit of a sense of how much it can be worth: Alvaro Fernandez, Jamison Olave & Fabian Espindola, Ryan Johnson and lately maybe even Omar Cummings.

This Allocation Money can do magical things.

Allocation money does not count against a clubâ€™s salary budget and can be used:

To sign players new to MLS (that is, a player who did not play in MLS during the previous season).

Nine different pro sides called Alvaro Fernandez theirs. Uruguay, the 4th place finisher at the 2010 World Cup, used him as a midfielder and now looks to him as a wide forward in their 4-3-3. And yet, in MLS he's merely good - or according to Hot Time In Old Town awful.

Last year I looked into the concept of 'Carryover Minutes' and their relationship to success in Major League Soccer. I define carryover minutes as minutes that come from a player that was on a team the previous year. For example, the Chicago Fire received carryover minutes last night from Sean Johnson, Jalil Anibaba, Gonzalo Segares, Logan Pause, Patrick Nyarko, Dominic Oduro, and Daniel Paladini.

Every season I always made bold predictions and in those predictions I always have one that is pretty common from season to season. I always claim that a trade will reshape a season or at least allow one or two teams to get ahead.

Thierry Henry's standout performance against Columbus earned him Player of the Week honors for Week 28. New York beat the Crew 3-1 with Henry scoring two goals and assisting on another. Henry received 13 of the 19 1st-place votes. Chicago's Alvaro Fernandez picked up four, with his teammate Chris Rolfe getting one.

There have been stories of Marco Pappa joining Dutch side SC Heerenveen. There have been stories
of Marco Pappa joining EPL club Wigan in the winter. It turns out the full story is a mix of the
two. Pappa will join SC Heerenveen at the conclusion of the 2012 MLS Regular Season.

The Dutch league should suit Pappa better than the EPL so this is a very good move.

In 2012 the midfield scoring fell off. The previous year, Alvaro Fernandez put in 12 goals and assisted on 5 in all competitions. Prior to that in 2010 Zakauni had 11 and 8. Last year the only midfield offensive threat in measurables (goals and assists) was Mauro Rosales. The Seattle Sounders can expect strong assist numbers from the play-making winger, but what they need in light of the loss of Fredy Montero is more power from the stacked midfield.

Another day, another CCL win for the Sounders. Seattle scored thrice in the 3-1 win over
Caledonia, providing the squad with a stranglehold on Group 4 of the Champions League. Around the
rest of the CCL, Toronto was in a relatable position, losing 3-1 to Santos Laguna. Los Angeles
hosted the Puerto Rico Islanders and took advantage of home pitch with a 4-0 pantsing.

Hey, we made it back. Hope you missed us. That was pretty excruciating, wasn't it? Not knowing
if you had the right opinions about the Chelsea friendly or the All-Star Game? Good thing we're
back to tell you how you should feel about all the Transfer Window Madness and Saturday's win over
the Colorado Rapids.

Tomorrow's match against the Colorado Rapids has certainly snuck up on us. It's the first
competitive match in almost two weeks for the Sounders - a long dry stretch for a team used to
multiple matches a week. And the last few days leading up to the close of the transfer window have
been dominated by speculation about player movement, climaxing in the team's flurry of moves today
that sent Alvaro Fernandez to Chicago and brought Christian Tiffert and Mario Martinez to
Seattle.

As we look forward to the end of the offseason and to the start of preseason, we have to wonder what is going through the head of head coach Frank Klopas. What kind of moves will he make? What kind of formations and tactics will he employ throughout the 2013 season? These are the 2 major questions in my mind that I will delve into and try to answer for you.

Saturday's win was the third straight match in which the Fire have scored multiple goals. This
all comes after only scoring 2 goals for the entire month of July. Yes, our last three matches were
against some pretty poor competition, but these are games good teams must win.

While part of the goal production can be attributed to the opponents the Fire have faced in
August, some of this credit should also go to the acquisition of Sherjill MacDonald and Alvaro
Fernandez and to the fact that Rolfe seems to be looking more comfortable with his role in the
team.

The Rest

We all knew the Alvaro Fernandez loan was coming. It had gotten to Waiting for Godot type levels. Even Chicago-Fire.com Editor Jeff Crandall wrote articles with the implication that Fernandez was on his way out.

Well, the Chicago Fire Soccer Club announced today that the club has loaned Alvaro "Flaco" Fernandez to Qatari side Al Rayyan.